Out of Fire, Out of Ice
by Hayabusa1138
Summary: After she has suffered horrendous injuries at the hands of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader supervises the recovery of his Shadow Hand, Shira Brie.


A dark figure stood inside of his private medical bay of the Super Star Destroyer _Executor_. He was tall and clad in black armor, a blinking life support system upon his chest. His breaths sounded loud and haggard, the artificial gasps and exhales echoing through the room.

"She will live?" he said. His voice was deep and resonate as he gestured towards the circular bacta tank in the center of the room. A red haired woman was suspended by tethers in the tank. Her features that his son had found beautiful had been marred and deformed. Her limbs were gone, terminating below the hips for her legs and above the elbows on her arms. Her once slender jaw below high cheekbones was ravaged to the bone on her left side with the right disappearing under a white bandage that caved in towards her throat. Two life support ports in her chest and left side carried the oxygen that she required directly to her lungs.

The humanoid medical droid turned his attention away from the agent in the tank and to the Sith lord. Vader stared at him, masked eyes unblinking. "It appears so," it said. Somehow, despite the emotionless programming it sounded confused. The half-sphere head with diagonal eye slits turned back to the tank.

Darth Vader studied his pupil as she floated in silent recovery. The Force had often performed such "miracles" as the non-sensitives would call them. In her destroyed TIE fighter in the middle of deep space she had floated until he had found her. The deep cold of space had frozen the blood from pouring out of her mangled and missing limbs and her limited supply of oxygen had lasted in part due to a Force trance that she had entered.

The trance had seemed so easily to enter in another life. It was nothing to call upon it to heal wounds, conserve oxygen or just to pass the time on long hyperspace jumps in the cockpit of a starfighter. For all of the power that the dark side offered, this was one that was difficult to control. One would have to take all of one's hate, anger, fear and other negative emotions and channel it into pure will to survive.

"She will require major cybernetic reconstruction."

Vader paused. He could feel the burning brand of his treasonous master and friend slicing through his limbs again. His back burned with the heat of volcanic fire. Through nostrils that hadn't drawn non-filtered air for nearly 25 years he could smell his own skin broiling once more.

She had proven useful in him in the past: stopping the rebel strike team that she had infiltrated on the new Death Star and helping him kill two of its remaining three members, and now unwillingly sacrificing so much to discredit Luke Skywalker. He knew when he gave her the mission that she would never be able to kill Skywalker like he had ordered. His son was simply too powerful in the Force to be stopped in that manner. The other objective to discredit him would now be in force. Skywalker had fired upon her ship while all communications were jammed, trusting in the Force while Shira had moved to kill him in the fog of war. "I have told you to treat her, do not make me clarify it."

The other rebels would question Skywalker, berate him, court-martial him, perhaps. He would lose the support of friends and others, all while berating himself for killing his lover accidentally. It would drive Skywalker away from the Rebellion. Drive him straight to Vader.

The Dark Lord of the Sith felt the pressure of his forearms upon his fingers and uncrossed his arms. "Give her synthskinned prosthetics," he said.

"Putting the order in now, Lord Vader," the medical droid said. It spun away and made itself useful elsewhere.

She had been useful in the past and she would be useful in the future. She would never be as powerful as she could have been and that feeling would sting and fester inside of her. She would make do, though. She would strive to complement her weaknesses and make them her strengths instead.

"Lumiya," he said out loud.

"Lord Vader?" the medical droid asked.

"You will cease calling her Shira Brie," Darth Vader said. "She will be known as 'Lumiya' to you from now on." He would continue her training in the Force and even present her to Palpatine as a potential Emperor's Hand. Unlike his last attempt at an apprentice, she would be hidden under the Emperor's nose. And if his son would come around to joining him... One apprentice could easily replace another. It was the Sith way.


End file.
